Museu Nacional Solidarity Network

This webpage provides information about initiatives supporting the efforts of colleagues in Brazil who are working to re-establish the post-graduate programme in social anthropology after the fire at the Museu Nacional in Sept 2018.

If you have any ideas or suggestions, please get in touch.

NOTICE: We are looking for a 12m2 room in London to store donated books ready for shipping - please let us know if you can help.

BOOK DONATIONS

The Francisca Keller library is part of the Graduate Program in Social Anthropology of the National Museum, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (PPGAS/MN/UFRJ). Before the recent fire, it was considered to be one of the most important social science libraries in Brazil and Latin America, holding a priceless collection of some 37,000 volumes, collected over the last 50 years of the library’s existence.

PPGAS, together with UFRJ’s Library System, is beginning a book donation campaign.

In order to organize this process, a webpage has been created where you will find important information about how to donate. Please do not send anything without first filling in the online consultation form available on the webpage below.

We are also currently working with colleagues at the Museu Nacional to compile a list of essential texts, which we will put here when ready.

If you have contact with any publishers who may be able to help, please let us know.

VISITING/WRITING-UP FELLOWSHIPS

There are several visiting/writing-up fellowship possibilities for doctoral students from PPGAS currently being developed.

CURRENT FELLOWSHIPS/EXCHANGES

Oxford-Museu exchange

Jeferson Scabio

Jeferson Scabio is a recognised student at the Latin American Centre, University of Oxford, from January 2019 to June 2019. He is co-supervised by Dr Andreza A. de Souza Santos and Professor Elizabeth Ewart. To know more about the collaboration between Oxford and the Museu, please get in touch by email: andreza.desouzasantos(at)lac.ox.ac.uk

On the evening of September 2, 2018, Museu Nacional, the most ancient scientific Brazilian institution, burnt down as a result of successive decades of neglect of the country authorities. Documents and artefacts fundamental to the history of Brazil, especially of indigenous and black people, as well as collections that expressed our biodiversity wealth, were reduced to ashes in a matter of hours, an immeasurable loss for Brazilians and for humanity as a whole. It is not just about a dead past, but about our future: when we lost the record of what we were, we lost a part of what we could be.

As a gesture of solidarity and recognition of Museu’s importance, the University of Oxford, in an initiative led by the Brazilian Studies Programme at the Latin American Centre (LAC) in collaboration with the School of Anthropology & Museum of Ethnography (SAME), offered a recognized student position to a PhD candidate of the Programa de Pós Graduação em Antropologia Social (PPGAS) from Museu Nacional. I applied and was selected for this fortunate opportunity, given that, as a consequence of that announced tragedy, the PPGAS has lost its library (one of the biggest anthropology library of Latin America) and is functioning precariously without any basic infrastructure.

Over the last two years, I have carried out ethnographic research with social movements from Rio de Janeiro’s slums, focused on state policies and forms of action of these movements. Now, in the stage of writing up, I came to Oxford to profit from the contact with lectures, seminars, and academic community, as well as University libraries, in the hope that my work may be a small but significant step on the long way of reinventing what the fire has devoured.

MUSEUM ARTEFACTS

If you are involved in the Museum sector and want to know how you can help, please get in touch.